PD World

Paul Brett with the latest PD and freeware roundup.

As is often the case the warmer summer weather (what!!!! - ED) slows down the development and release of PD, Shareware and Freeware software, so this issue we have a sightly smaller PD column than usual. Still we do have a new announcement to make at the start so without further lets continue.

RISCWorld - Highly Recommended

From now in the PD column you may well come across a new logo next to a product name. Its the RISCWorld Highly Recommended logo and it looks like this:

We are going to award this to any product, hardware, commercial software, shareware, PD or freeware that we think is exceptionally good. If you see this logo next to a product then you be assured that we have tried it, and we like it a lot. I cannot take the credit for this idea as it was proposed by Andrew Harmsworth after finding a particular piece of software that he just could not do without. There may not be a logo awarded every issue, or indeed there may be several in each issue, we will have to see. Now let us carry on with the latest software releases.

CamPins - Stuart Halliday

We featured this back in RISC World Volume 2 Issue 6, but since then it has had an upgrade or two. For those who don't remember, CamPins works if you double click on one of the TaskObey script files in the CamPins directory. Your computer then tries to download an image from a site on the Internet and then places this image onto your Pinboard as a Sprite. Some of these scripts grab an image from a webcam site. Some of these scripts grab an html page first and then download an image referred to by that page. CamPins uses ChangeFSI to convert any images it finds into RISC OS sprites. You will need to follow the instructions supplied inside the CamPins archive to install the software.

FadeBack - Richard Goodwin

I am sure that everyone has seen and admired the new graduated backdrop feature in RISC OS Select. Now you can have a much improved version on any version of RISC OS courtesy of Richard Goodwin. This allows you to produce all sort of wonderful coloured backdrops easily and quickly using the comprehensive built in features. I have to confess that I got somewhat distracted by Fadeback and spent rather a long time playing with all the options. In my opinion this is one of the most interesting releases this year.

Locate - Stephen Fryatt

Locate is a file find utility for RISC OS. It will search a specified directory for files that match a set of conditions. These conditions include the filename (including wildcards), file size, modification date and filetype. Locate is loosely based on similar utilities available on other platforms: particularly File Find on Windows. Locate requires RISC OS 3.1 or later. It can be run off a hard disc or floppy disc. To install Locate on a hard disc, copy the !Locate application to a suitable directory. Under RISC OS Select, Locate will act as a Filer plugin for Find by default. See the Filer Action Plugin section for details of how to disable this feature.

Mod Check - Owen Griffin

A very simple program, but one that is exceptionally useful. ModCheck will examine your !System directory hunting out all the modules that make up RISC OS. It can then tell you which modules need to be updated. Running this on one of my RISC PCs produced rather a shock as I had thought it was all up to date!

ViNCe - Vincent Lefevre

The latest version of the VNC client originally ported by Henrik Bjerregaard Pedersen. ViNCe gives RISC OS users a remote desktop facility, so you can control (and view) the desktop of one machine from another. This new version has a number of bug fixes as well as improved support for the ViewFinder card.

That's it from me for this issue, as usual if you have any PD, Freeware or Shareware applications you would like featured why not get in touch with the editor